Climate Adaptation and Resilience in Vanuatu
This article was originally featured in Van-KIRAP’s social media on 17 November, 2023.
Vanuatu’s climate is changing rapidly due to human-induced climate change, and it is already seeing the impacts through rising sea-levels, increasingly severe cyclones, extreme rainfall, and marine heatwaves.
A CSIRO Climate Science Centre (CSC) led consortium of CSIRO, NGIS and FrontierSI has developed the Vanuatu Climate Futures Portal as part of the project entitled Climate Information Services for Resilient Development in Vanuatu (Van KIRAP). The Van KIRAP project is funded by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and administered by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP).
Gavin Kennedy from FrontierSI providing training to key government agencies.
The Vanuatu Climate Futures Portal delivers comprehensive climate and non-climate related data and resources in the form of interactive geospatial mapping tools, technical reports and step by step hazard-based impact assessment guides. These resources are designed to provide the highest quality information needed to ensure Vanuatu is ready for a changing climate and has the adaptive capacity needed to protect communities and priority sectors, including agriculture, fisheries, water, infrastructure and tourism.
Gavin Kennedy from FrontierSI was on hand in Vanuatu to provide training in the use of the portal to key government agencies, helping to develop confidence in using the portal and its resources to facilitate decision-making processes, and then to provide that training to their own staff and collaborators.
The week-long series of workshops, and 8 years of work for SPREP and CSIRO, culminated in the official hand-over of the portal to the Vanuatu government in a ceremony attended by senior Vanuatu government officials and the Australian High Commission. Vanuatu now has a comprehensive set of tools for visualising and planning for the future impacts of climate change, a first for the Pacific Islands region.
Credit: Nick Howlett, Communications Co-ordinator, VanKIRAP